COVID-19: stats may help you understand more

Kailash Purang (Managing Partner, AlphaZetta Singapore) shared his blogger post via LinkedIn.

4 Mar 2020

There has been a lot of fear around the Covid19, and a lot of it has to do with not understanding what is going on. A lot of what is going on should be easily understood by anyone with basic statistics background and some common sense when it comes to medical issues. Since I am one of the millions who satisfy these criteria, and I have heard some stuff that surprised me – I was so relieved when my colleague on the same floor tested negative! – I decided to write this blog, showing how basic statistical knowledge would help understand what is happening in the Covid19 situation. It will not prevent anyone from catching the virus, but I hope it can lessen anxiety regarding various reports that have been floating around.

Why you need to understand sampling

How would you know if someone has Covid19 or not? Covid19 is caused by a virus, and there are mainly 4 ways in which one can test for a virus (1). But let me just explain what a virus does, and you will see that the testing methods are easy to understand.

A virus is a small infectious agent that replicates inside living cells (2). So in order to thrive, a virus has to get into a living cell and there it can try to replicate. So find a healthy cell, infect it, and try to replicate. The infection damages the healthy cell, which can then damage the immune system, while doing that the virus actually changes the genetic material of the cells (the cells don’t do what they were supposed to do anymore, or not as well), and can cause inflammation that may damage organs.